Walk the Italian Garden down to Triton Lake

Find the Japanese gardens and the Pepperpot Tower

Find the pet cemetery the Wingfields kept

Walk to the foot of Powerscourt Waterfall, 121 metres high

Powerscourt, above Enniskerry, began as a 13th-century castle and was remodelled by Richard Cassels between 1731 and 1741; a fire in 1974 left it a shell until it was restored in 1996. The gardens are the reason to come. Mervyn Wingfield inherited the estate in 1844 at the age of eight, and when he came of age he made the gardens you see: the Italian Garden, Triton Lake, the Japanese gardens, the walled gardens, a pet cemetery, and the Pepperpot Tower, said to be modelled on Lady Wingfield's three-inch pepper pot. A few kilometres south, Powerscourt Waterfall drops 121 metres from the Dargle's hanging valley — the second highest waterfall in Ireland.

Powerscourt: The Gardens and the Waterfall

Powerscourt and Glendalough

Dublin

Five nights in a loop from Dublin, south into Wicklow and north to the Boyne: Powerscourt and the Sugar Loaf, the Spinc above Glendalough, Trim Castle and Tara, then Newgrange and Knowth.

Wicklow and the Boyne Valley from Dublin

Glendalough and the Wicklow Mountains

A loop from the ferry: Viking Dublin, the Boyne tombs, medieval Kilkenny, the Rock of Cashel, the Copper Coast, the Hook and Glendalough.

Ireland's Ancient East: A Fortnight From Dublin Port

Walk up the Great Sugar Loaf from the main car park on its south-western side

Scramble the last section of loose quartzite to the summit

Look north over Bray and Dublin Bay and west into the Wicklow Mountains

Find out why the cone shape has nothing to do with volcanoes

Everybody who drives the N11 past Kilmacanogue assumes the Great Sugar Loaf is an extinct volcano. It is not. At 501m it is a cone of quartzite — an erosion-resistant metamorphosed deep-sea sediment that simply outlasted everything around it, leaving the shape behind. It is a short walk in, a scramble up the final cone, and the whole of Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Mountains laid out from the top.

The Great Sugar Loaf: The Cone That Is Not a Volcano

Walk the full cliff path from Bray seafront round Bray Head to Greystones

Look down on the railway line clinging to the cliff below the path

Climb up to the cross on top of Bray Head for the view back over Dublin Bay

Take the DART back from Greystones rather than walking it twice

The railway round Bray Head was driven along the cliff face in the 19th century and the sea has been working at it ever since. The walking path runs beside and above the line, about seven kilometres round the head from the end of Bray seafront to the harbour at Greystones, with the Irish Sea directly below and no road anywhere near it. The proper way to do it is to walk one way and take the DART back.

Bray to Greystones: The Cliff Walk Round Bray Head

Hike the Wicklow Way from the J.B. Malone memorial stone on White Hill up the boarded sleeper path to Djouce's summit (725m)

From the Djouce summit cairn, identify the Great Sugar Loaf to the east and Lugnaquilla to the south

Continue on the Way through the Dargle valley, past the turn-off for Powerscourt Waterfall — at 121m, one of Ireland's tallest

Cover at least 50km of the trail across consecutive days, following the trail's yellow-figure waymarkers

The Wicklow Way was the Republic's first waymarked trail — its opening section was cut in 1980 and the full route finished later and running 131km from Marlay Park in south Dublin to Clonegal in County Carlow. This ultra-distance challenge covers the trail's high central section through the Wicklow Mountains, including the path over Djouce (725m) laid with old railway sleepers.

The Wicklow Way End to End: 131km

Find Cooldrinagh on Kerrymount Avenue, Foxrock — the house Beckett's family built in 1903, where he was born in the main bedroom in 1906

Tour Trinity College Dublin, where Beckett studied French and Italian before becoming a lecturer there himself

Cross the Samuel Beckett Bridge, Santiago Calatrava's harp-shaped structure over the Liffey, opened in 2009

Note that Beckett's plays are still regularly staged around Dublin — check the Gate and Abbey Theatre listings for what's on

Samuel Beckett was born in 1906 in the main bedroom of Cooldrinagh, the house his family built on Kerrymount Avenue in Foxrock three years earlier, and it is still a private house on a suburban road. He read French and Italian at Trinity and came back to lecture there before leaving for Paris and writing the work that took theatre apart. The bridge named after him is Santiago Calatrava's, opened in 2009 and shaped like a harp laid on its side across the Liffey.

Beckett's Dublin: Cooldrinagh, Trinity and the Bridge

Mountain bike the waymarked 15km Ticknock trail network, with views over Dublin City and Bay to the Wicklow Mountains

Ride the trails at Glencullen Adventure Park (The GAP), 20 minutes from Dublin city centre

Find the Ballyedmonduff Wedge Tomb, a Bronze Age burial site tucked into the forest near Ticknock

Compare Ticknock's purpose-built singletrack with Glencullen's more natural, technical trails

Dublin has purpose-built singletrack twenty minutes from the city centre. Ticknock carries a waymarked 15km network with the whole city, the bay and the Wicklow Mountains laid out below you on the descents. Glencullen Adventure Park, over the shoulder, is a paid downhill bike park with an uplift — steep and gravity-fed where Ticknock is flowing, and worth riding on the same trip to feel the difference. Tucked into the forest near Ticknock is the Ballyedmonduff Wedge Tomb, a Bronze Age burial that was on this hillside four thousand years before the trails were cut.

Ticknock and Glencullen: Mountain Biking Above Dublin

Cycle Sally Gap, one of two road passes crossing the Wicklow Mountains, on the R759 Military Road

Climb Wicklow Gap (475m) on the R756, a category 3 climb in Tour de France terms, linking Dunlavin and Glendalough

Finish at Glencree, an 1806 military barracks turned reformatory and now the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation

Log the full 120km route and roughly 2,400m of climbing across all three passes

Only two road passes cross the Wicklow Mountains and this ride takes both of them in a day, plus Glencree — about 120km and 2,400m of climbing. Sally Gap goes over on the R759 Military Road with nothing but blanket bog either side. Wicklow Gap tops out at 475m on the R756 between Dunlavin and Glendalough, a category 3 climb in Tour de France terms. And the day finishes at Glencree, where an 1806 military barracks became a reformatory and is now the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.

Sally Gap, Wicklow Gap and Glencree in One Day

Go through the nine galleries of Titanic Belfast, from Boomtown Belfast to the wreck

Stand at the head of the Titanic and Olympic slipways and see how the building's prows line up with them

Go aboard SS Nomadic in Hamilton Dock, the last White Star Line ship in existence

Find the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast

Find the old Harland & Wolff drawing offices, and look across to Samson and Goliath

Titanic Belfast opened in 2012, a hundred years after the ship's maiden voyage, on Queen's Island, the land Harland & Wolff built Olympic, Titanic and Britannic on. The building stands 38 metres high, the height of Titanic's hull, and its prows point straight down the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the Lagan; inside, nine galleries run from Boomtown Belfast, the city as it was in 1909–11, through the building, the launch and the sinking. Around it is the rest of the story: the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast; SS Nomadic, launched on 25 April 1911 to carry passengers out to Olympic and Titanic at Cherbourg, and now the last White Star Line ship in existence; Harland & Wolff's headquarters and drawing offices, a hotel since 2017; and Samson and Goliath, the shipyard's Krupp cranes, put up in 1974 and 1969.

Titanic Belfast: The Slipways Where She Was Built

Go round Derrynane House and find the relics of O'Connell's career

Find the library wing O'Connell built in 1825

Walk across Derrynane beach to Abbey Island at low tide and find the ruined abbey

Climb the stairways inside the walls of Staigue Fort, built around 100 BC

Derrynane House was the home of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator, and it stands in 120 hectares of parkland on the Kerry coast, with relics of his life and career inside. His grandparents built or extended the house in the 1700s; O'Connell himself built the south wing facing the sea and the library wing in 1825, now the oldest parts that survive. Below it you can walk across Derrynane beach to Abbey Island and the ruined Ahamore Abbey, but only at low tide. Nine kilometres away, Staigue Fort was built in the late Iron Age, probably around 100 BC: a ring of dry stone 27 metres across, with walls up to 5.5 metres high and 4 metres thick, and inside an elaborate network of stairways leading to terraces.